I recently switched from iBooks to Marvin and it's a great piece of nice crafted software. I hope a new version for both iPhone and Mac gets out.

In the meantime, I would like to understand how can I handle the exported annotations in xhtml. Can I open it in every browser? When reimporting into Marvin, can I link to the original epub even if in the meantime I changed the name and/or metadata of the book?

In the meantime, I would like to understand how can I handle the exported annotations in xhtml. Can I open it in every browser?

Yes. In a future release, Marvin will be switching from XHTML to standard HTML to make the exported file even more compatible. (XHTML fails to display properly in iOS 6.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsolignani

When reimporting into Marvin, can I link to the original epub even if in the meantime I changed the name and/or metadata of the book?

Good question. Why not test it to see what happens? Create a backup of the original copy of the book, though, in case it doesn't work out. I believe Kris once mentioned Marvin compares 2 books "byte by byte" in order to determine whether they are identical. A change of the file-name, for instance, might disrupt the process, though.

Marvin needs to match the annotations to the book. The match works (more or less) in the following order of decreasing likelihood:

- The book is *exactly* the same as the one that created the annotations file.
- Calibre's UUID (Marvin will show a nag to confirm).
- Some other stuff like name and author (Marvin will show a nag to confirm).

This is a safe-to-cautious approach. Importing annotations into the wrong book can mess things up.

The case where the books is exactly the same of course is irrelevant, it would never rise an error or an issue. That could arise when you change something into the book (if the filename is irrelevant, I guess metadata such as author, title and UUID).

It could be useful to write a FAQ telling people what they have to ensure is matching when importing annotation, and if something does not match how to edit both the epub and the xhtml file to get the both to match each other. An ID field would be the better thing, and maybe one can use the UUID from Calibre, but I wonder whether the epub gets edited with the UUID from Calibre (I knew Calibre do not touch epubs, as long as you do not install the modify epub plugin).

And let's talk this scenario: I have a Calibre library which gets messed up, I rebuild it from scratch, reimporting every book, in that case I guess the UUID would change, right?

And, eventually, what about letting the user decide to which book import the annotations while importing? Marvin could suggest the best match, but the user could scroll the library and choose another one...

Tiziano, why do you keep 2 different Calibres there? Why not keep them both in sync? I use SugarSync to do just that, and it works great. Whatever I add to Calibre on computer 1, automatically appears in Calibre on computer 2 as well. (And vice versa.) Plus, of course, it's also automatically available for download into Marvin on all my iOS devices, thanks to the SugarSync apps there.

I usually use Google Drive instead of Dropbox and similar ones to keep my files in sync amongst several machines, but I know drive does not work well with calibre due to the book ID (which drive reads as a duplicate mark - anyway google drive is #crapware, now I cannot trash it for I have many work documents into that, but I would not suggest anyone to start using it, right now). Anyway, this way I should install another sync-client and that's not a think I like the most.

What's more, I wonder what would happen if I kept 2 istances of Calibre open in 2 different machines (I can forget to shut one down, for example): is the sync not going to get messed up? What files does sugarsync (or dropbox, whatever) exactly sync? Just the books of even the database? If I am not wrong, the calibre library is made of several directory with book and a special file which is a SQlite database, what happens when there are 2 conflicting version of the database?

I am not sure I would like syncing calibre with a sync client, it sound much like a workaround, I guess a sync server would be much better.

What's more, I wonder what would happen if I kept 2 istances of Calibre open in 2 different machines (I can forget to shut one down, for example): is the sync not going to get messed up?

I don't think so -- at least not using SugarSync.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsolignani

What files does sugarsync (or dropbox, whatever) exactly sync? Just the books of even the database?

I have no idea. I just know it does exactly what I need to get done: all books are available on all machines, computers or hand-held devices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsolignani

I am not sure I would like syncing calibre with a sync client, it sound much like a workaround, I guess a sync server would be much better.

Well, I for one don't care what it sounds like, as long as it works. And it does for me, so I'm happy and can move on to more important things. You know, there are so many things in life that don't work, that I have no time (or need) to examine why certain things do work as expected.